Junkyard Find: 1979 Fiat 124 Sport Spider

Murilee Martin
by Murilee Martin
Back in the early 1980s, when I began my junkyard-crawling career in the East Bay, I would find examples of the Fiat 124 Sport Spider on a depressingly regular basis. I still find them today, in about the same quantities; the only difference is that now they’re 40 years old instead of six years old.Here’s the latest: a black ’79 without a speck of corrosion, spotted in my old East Oakland junkyard stomping grounds (though at a yard that didn’t exist in 1982).
124 Sport Spiders can be purchased for next to nothing in restorable condition, and such has been the case for about a half-century. This means that any broken or registration-challenged example lives perched on the edge of doom, teetering over the abyss with the front wheels pointed straight down at the nearest Ewe Pullet. These cars sit for years or decades in driveways, garages, and yards across the land. A few get fixed and returned to the street. For most, that little shove over the cliff comes… eventually.
These cars were much more fun than the engine specs might suggest. This one came with the 2.0-liter Fiat Twin Cam, rated at 86 horsepower.
I’ve always admired the clever placement of the truck lock on these cars.
My collection of FASTEN SEAT BELT lights, mostly harvested during the 1989-1992 period, includes several dozen of these units.
From the Fiat 508 Balillo Spider of Benito Mussolini’s Italy to the 124 Sport Spider of the Ayatollah’s gas lines, Fiat had been there for those wanting temperamental sports cars at a reasonable (and rapidly depreciating) price.
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Murilee Martin
Murilee Martin

Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.

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  • SoCalMikester SoCalMikester on May 28, 2019

    basically goes to show how much of a ripoff BHPH places are. there was a lot of room to drop the price before it went to the scrapyard.

  • BillSellwood BillSellwood on May 29, 2019

    The body design of the spider still gets positive reactions. An early assignment for a young Giugiaro.

  • CanadaCraig You can just imagine how quickly the tires are going to wear out on a 5,800 lbs AWD 2024 Dodge Charger.
  • Luke42 I tried FSD for a month in December 2022 on my Model Y and wasn’t impressed.The building-blocks were amazing but sum of the all of those amazing parts was about as useful as Honda Sensing in terms of reducing the driver’s workload.I have a list of fixes I need to see in Autopilot before I blow another $200 renting FSD. But I will try it for free for a month.I would love it if FSD v12 lived up to the hype and my mind were changed. But I have no reason to believe I might be wrong at this point, based on the reviews I’ve read so far. [shrug]. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about it once I get to test it.
  • FormerFF We bought three new and one used car last year, so we won't be visiting any showrooms this year unless a meteor hits one of them. Sorry to hear that Mini has terminated the manual transmission, a Mini could be a fun car to drive with a stick.It appears that 2025 is going to see a significant decrease in the number of models that can be had with a stick. The used car we bought is a Mk 7 GTI with a six speed manual, and my younger daughter and I are enjoying it quite a lot. We'll be hanging on to it for many years.
  • Oberkanone Where is the value here? Magna is assembling the vehicles. The IP is not novel. Just buy the IP at bankruptcy stage for next to nothing.
  • Jalop1991 what, no Turbo trim?
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